Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini #231: "Son of Frankenstein" Actor Donnie Dunagan, Part 1

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

This week: Remembering Walter Brennan! "Mother's Carey's Chickens"! Bela Lugosi gets a nickname! And Donnie plays checkers with Boris Karloff! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Baseball is finally back. Get in on Major League action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks. Log in or sign up to play along as BetMGM brings the real-time action. Embrace a season's worth of swings with BetMGM, your one-stop shop for all things baseball. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager.

Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. What if we told you you're already off to a great start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here? From our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese-inspired dish ready in minutes, PC makes any culinary adventure an on-budget breeze. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, Colossal Obsessions. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and this is Gilbert and Frank's amazing Colossal Obsessions.

Now, since we first started doing this, I've been saying, you know, I'm like an old monster movie freak, and I kept saying, we have to have Donnie Donegan. From Son of Frankenstein. Yeah, Son of Frankenstein. And we looked

and found him. We tracked him down. Here he is. Yeah, so... The last remaining surviving cast member from Son of Frankenstein. With Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Baila Gossi. And Lionel Atwill. So Donnie, welcome to the show, my friend. Thank you. You tracked me down. That's why the FBI was here this morning, huh? Yeah, I was here this morning, huh? Yeah.

And we have something else in common. We're both, can be proud to say, we're part of two Disney classic films. I was the parrot in Aladdin, and you, tell us what you were. I was a facial model for Bambi, the original Bambi first, and then Mr. Disney took my mom and we'd eat lunch one day, and just as casual as you can be, he said, hey, how about doing the voice? And my mother said something very clever, like, you bet. So we are actually, we are talking to Disney royalty. We're talking to the voice. And my mother said something very clever like, you bet. We are talking to Disney royalty. We're talking to the original voice of Bambi, which is a very, very cool thing. But Donnie, let's

start at the beginning. You were a kid of the Depression. No money. How did you get into show business in the first place? If I was a linguist, I would tell you luck in 55 languages. Okay. Tell us in one. I'll just use English. It's probably my best foot.

And a lot of wonderful people. First, we were in San Angelo and San Antonio, Texas. Everybody's looking for a job. College graduates were looking for a job. Neither of my parents had any real education. Wonderful people, and I mean wonderful people, worked for 20 cents an hour, each one of them. And my dad finally got a job for 25 cents an hour.

Now, think about that as a motivation for a second. And moved us from San Antonio, Texas, to Memphis, Tennessee. I've just turned four years old, and we moved into a little two-room apartment. Now, I remember some of this, and rather soon, I remember most of it, okay? A little two-room apartment above a small hardware store in the middle of Memphis, Tennessee. And no radio. Nobody knew how to spell television yet, of course. And both my parents had worked like the Dickens.

And there's no entertainment. What do you think about that word, entertainment? And my mom started taking me on Saturday afternoons when she wasn't working about two ding-dings away. And that's how I encountered distance to no space. And for a land navigator to use ding-dings is really funny. Ding-dings to me were the stop signs. Oh, you were two ding-dings away. Very good.

You know, the signs came down, go, ding-ding-ding, stop. So two ding-dings away. Very good. You know, the science came down. Go, ding-ding-ding, stop. So two ding-dings away. There was on the street corner, large, large concrete area street corner, I think in front of a little drugstore, was a man that danced on Saturday afternoon with a black hat, like a top hat, on the sidewalk, and a big fuller.

I had never seen one before. I remember this well. You cranked it up, had a huge enunciator, like a big cone, and he had top shoes on. I had enough. That's my first experience with that, I'm sure. Later in my life, I teased people about he must have been to an orthopedic surgeon, had all his bones removed. He could make Ray Bolger look like he was doing a Marine Corps march.

This guy could really dance. Oh, he danced like a rag doll, like he had no bones. Yeah, he was incredible. A lot of people, he was a black man, and a lot of people would stand around. This is right on the edge of an area called the black area.

And I'm very sensitive to that term now. I'm hostile to that term. But in those days, I didn't know anything. And I'm four years old. My mom's there, and she's clapping. Everybody's clapping. I'm throwing pennies and some nickels, big deal nickels. People make it 20 cents an hour, right?

Toward this hat. And I'm standing there. Nobody's paying attention to me if I'm quiet or changed. And I'm barefoot. Not because I want to be barefoot. We don't have any shoes. I don't have any shoes. And I started imitating this guy.

And he notices that after a couple of Saturdays. Wow. He comes over to my mother. I'll never forget the first man I ever saw bow extra courteous to a lady. And they made a heck of an impression on me. Wow. That's great. So I'm barely four years old. This guy is at least six foot two, no bones. And we started doing a duet. That's great. About a month later, the word was there was going to be a big talent show in Memphis at a theater that's still there. And I understand it's a national monument now, not because of me, but because of the architecture.

because of the architecture. Anyway, a very nice theater in the downtown area of Memphis was going to have a talent show. Folks went to talent shows in those days. Sure. And spelling bees. They were bored, no money. I mean, everybody went.

We're kind of jaded about those things today. But a talent show and a big money prize, big money prize. And everybody was talking about it. Sam talked to my mother, and then he visited with my father for the first time, when he could catch him, about entering me in that talent show for children. So they put me in this talent contest, and Sam and his family had to sit up in that special area, which I think I started resenting at the time. Yes, he couldn't perform with you because it was whites only.

Yeah, whites only. In fact, he couldn't even sit in the place that was packed. He couldn't even sit in the regular theater. What a shame. Wow. What a shame. He had to go up in the balcony somewhere. I remember this. Yeah, they opened a balcony somewhere. I remember this, and that

angered me a little. I remember this well. That angered me a little bit. It was probably why I've been in the NAACP for decades. Now I'm on, we're in the theater, and I got these tap shoes on, and I know it's

kind of cheating with it. I can flip that baby really good. Dang, dang, dang. So I'm in the wings watching this thing. And now I think I realize that I'm the youngest whippersnapper around here. And the talent was great. The lady, the performer in front of me was a high school girl, did the ballet. And I can remember turning to my mother and saying something,

not verbatim, but something about, you know, this is a contest. What am I doing here? People with real talent, right? Oh, yeah. It was terrific. And the place was packed with lots of applause. And now it's my turn. My mom or somebody helped her put the

Sam's Victoria out. They had an orchestra, but they didn't have my number. I had one little number rehearsed. One of those funny little songs of the time of the Depression. They put the recorder out on the stage, cranked it up.

Somebody had made a top hat out of a paper bag for me, boot black, and a bit of a costume. Okay. And they put me out on the stage, and I did a song and dance with a stick from a tree as a cane, and this top hat, and I won the darn thing. That's great. At four years old. Four years old, I won the darn thing.

That's great. At four years old. Four years old. I wonder what I'm saying. A bit later in life, I probably thought I won an assembly vote, but anyway, I wonder what I'm saying. Now, everybody's super excited. We go back to our little flat, the two-room flat above this hardware store, and my mom and dad sat down the next morning. That was a Friday, as I remember.

I think it was a Friday. It was the next morning. Both of them have some hours off or change. They sat at this little table we had, and I'm sitting on the side. And I wasn't paying attention like I should have until the very end. My mom and dad said, let's go see Sam and his family. And they had this money, a lot of money for those days. Do you remember how much?

I think it was $100. Wow. Okay. And if you think for a second, one of my checks right away pretty soon was $75 a week. $75 a week in 1939 had to be, and I'm an old mathematician, I think had to be around $1,100 a day. So there was a lot of money.

Yeah. That's right. Oh, so excited. Anyway, my dad left, um, um, this is Saturday morning, I think fellas. And he went somewhere kind of like Sam did run off and got this thing changed some way. And now I would, I would tell you precisely, but I did not know precisely at the time. Okay. And, um, and we got my hand and we went down and walked at least three or four blocks to where Sam,

and my dad knew where he was, Sam's house, a little bitty, what we would call a duplex now, right on the edge of the sidewalk. And locked on the door, my mom and my dad and me. And here comes Sam and his wife and two daughters I had never met before. And Sam's a little shocked at the door. And my dad looked like he was a boxer kind of guy. My dad gave him half of that prize. Wow.

That was the right thing to do. Good for you, Dad. Yeah. Brady made an impression on me then and now. Wow. That was the right thing to do. Good for you, Dad. Yeah. Brady made an impression on me then and now. Wow. When did the RKO Talent Scout show up? In the audience at that talent show was a bona fide talent scout called in those days. I emphasize the word bona fide because that's how it was.

Maybe not anymore. And he was there visiting his mother who was in hospital. And I guess he was bored and he'd been there for a week or so. And he's getting ready to go back to Los Angeles. And he's in this audience. And he approached my mom and dad that Sunday right after we did the SAM visit. He found out where we were. And at first, my dad thought this was some kind of hanky-panky thing.

He didn't trust it. He didn't trust it. He said, this is too good to be true. He wanted us to go to Hollywood. In a couple of days, we're on a train. We had one suitcase between the three of us. And this nice man from Arcao, a company of us, he paid for everything.

We got the Grand Central Station in Los Angeles. None of us had ever seen anything like this in our lives. We're, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Put us in a nice apartment, four or five rooms. My mom didn't know what to do with all this. And suddenly you're in Hollywood. Now we're in Los Angeles.

And they took me I think in three or four days, real soon, to what I learned later to be a screen test. I had no idea. All I know, my mom and dad have got a little money. They have some kind of car. My dad didn't

have a license. He was worrying about not having a license. We're driving this car. And we're at the studio and we're doing what's called a screen test. And had I understood, I'm four years old, had I understood what that was and the significance of it, I would have probably screwed it up. But I thought, we're having a great time. And I had a great time with it. Somebody asked me to tell a couple of jokes, and they sent me the lines, and I told a couple of jokes. And right away after that, I was loaned out to another studio. And my mom and dad were very sensitive to this.

We didn't understand this at all. And that other studio happened to be Universal. And the very first film was Mother Carrie's Chickens. With Margaret Hamilton. Yes, exactly. Who was the evil witch from the West. And Walter Brennan. Walter Brennan.

I think Walter Brennan must have been born old looking. Yes, yes. He must have been. Yeah, he was always like, he always looked like he was 90. Had you turned five at this point, Donnie? You're still four. No, I'm still four.

Okay. This is like, okay, Gilbert, you're still four. Good question. Right, good observation, Gilbert. He always looked like he was old. And he made a heck of an impression on me and my mom, who was there almost all the time. My dad was off getting a job somewhere already. I don't think they trusted this operation much. Well, that's honest with you.

I mean, they're all in shock. But Walter Brennan was extremely courteous to my mother, I'll never forget, and very courteous with me. And I gave my mom some good advice on how to do some things and was very, very concerned about our welfare. So he had to have a real good heart, that old man. He probably looked old when he was 19. Yes.

And Mother Carrie's chicken was really a lot of fun. I remember a scene that they had me with a goat. And I fell in love with this goat, and I wanted to take it home. Nobody would let me take it home. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Baseball is finally back. Get in on Major League action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks.

Log in or sign up to play along as BetMGM brings the real-time action. Embrace a season's worth of swings with BetMGM, your one-stop shop for all things baseball. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Spring is here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered.

A cabana? That's a no. But a banana? That's a yes. A nice tan? Sorry, nope. But a box fan? Happily, yes. A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines? nope. But a box fan? Happily, yes. A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines? Yes.

Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. Well, how did you wind up in Son of Frankenstein? Did you have to audition? I don't think so, sir.

I think I'm a wonderful director, a very cultured man. Roland V. Lee. Wow, you guys have got your homework done. Roland V. Lee wanted me in the Son of Frankenstein film. Oh, I've got to share this with you. This is really funny. I was asked a question about this about a year ago

and it brought back this memory. My mom now is trying to teach me some culture. And I'm a young whippersnapper, all excited about all this. And she's trying to get me to introduce people and how to bow and do things that were more common then than now. And very early in the rehearsals, without costume, regular street clothes rehearsal for Son of Frankenstein,

everybody's there, it's early in the morning, and Roland V. Lee is getting ready to give us a briefing on what to do. Basil Rathbone, who made an incredible positive impression on me, is what a gentleman's supposed to do. Basil Rathbone, who made an incredible positive impression on me is what a gentleman is supposed to be. And he's there, and Boris Karloff, and Gilbert,

Boris Karloff would have loved you. He would have called you a man that didn't need no batteries, okay? Wow. How about that? Wow, that's exciting.

So Boris Karloff would have loved me? Oh, he would have loved you. I think he wanted to be a stand-up comic. I really do. He was a wonderful guy. And I know something of you and your dynamics. He would have loved you.

They were all sitting there at Universal. I had just heard Abel Legosi, classic horror film guy, right? I just heard his name the day before. And now my mom is trying to teach me culture and how to introduce everything. And I'm trying to pay attention to that. And we're all sitting there. Mr. Lee is getting ready to give us a briefing with a clipboard. Remember that well.

Here comes Mr. Legosi. He's always late. Here he comes. He's always late. Here he comes. He's always late by a few minutes. Here he comes, like, upstaging everybody or something. And then, I wonder, oh, here I am. And I want to impress my mom, everybody, right? And I, everybody, everybody, look here. Here comes Mr. Belly Goosey. Belly Goosey. Belly Goosey. Oh, my.

Oh, my. Everybody roared except him. If I had understood what a glare was, I promise you I got a glare. You got a dirty look from Dracula. Which is quite an honor. A great honor. He never talked to me throughout the whole movie. And part of that problem was that Boris Karloff, who I promise you, Gilbert, my partner, he really wanted to be a stand-up comic. He was a wonderful guy.

Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone teased him with that name throughout the whole movie. Every once in a while, they'd say, hey, Belly, get your goosey over here. They teased him by calling him Belly Goosey. Oh, he did not like that at all. Donnie, I heard you say that Bela didn't socialize much with the rest

of the cast. No, he's always gone. We would have a party or luncheon or something. Oh, and we were going to do something special for the Salvation Army. Everybody, the big guys that moved all the stages around, they showed up. He never showed up. I didn't have this word in my vocabulary then, but I would have called him a compulsive recluse. He never showed up.

interesting you know what's interesting about watching you in the movie is it's like here you are a curly blonde haired little boy from the south

yeah with a southern accent and your basil rat bone son did it ever occur to anybody that we have a kid from Memphis, Tennessee with a bit of a Tennessee accent playing the son of an Englishman? I'll give you the wonderful question. I'll give you the event that really triggered that one.

Earlier in the film in Transyl, in the big hall, right? Yes. Big hall. One of my lines was to welcome the gendarme, the priest captain, comandante of Transylvania, okay? And here he is, and I'm supposed to welcome him, right? And my line was,

well, hello, hello. And nobody had tuned me down any yet. They did pretty quick. But nobody tuned me down yet. And so here we are in dress rehearsal. And no, no, no, this is going to be a take. It's going to be take one. And we had these big boom mics on what we would call our booms above me, above everybody, way up in the sky.

And Mr. Lee, wonderful guy, he was standing way off on the side. I remember him saying, Donnie, the microphone's way up high. Speak up, son, speak up. He need not have said that to me, speak up. I had a drill instructor voice in those days. So here's my line, and it says take one, right? Here I go. Well, hello, you all. That's hilarious. So you're the son of Basil Rathbone

living in Transylvania saying you all. We tell you all. We'll help you all. Hilarious. Gilbert and I like the scene when they're putting you to bed and you want the curtains left open and you say, I like lightning. You sort of give yourself away there, Don. Oh, my gosh. That stopped the production for 10 minutes. Is that a Texas, a little bit of a Texas accent,

or is that a Tennessee accent? Then or no? Then, in those days. I think it was homogenized. Okay. Now, you would play checkers with the great Karloff? We found this fascinating. Oh, how'd you find out about that?

Oh, my gosh. The sets then were real heavy wood, not like today, I'm sure. And it took a long time to change the sets, like in the big hall of Transylvania, etc., right? And so there was a lot of time between what I learned then, takes, between scene takes, right? So we're all sitting around, and we couldn't leave. We were all told to stay there. And we had these canvas chairs with our names on it. That was the first time I ever saw my name on anything, and they had a canvas chair here, a canvas chair there.

And mine was right next to Mr. Karloff's. Now, at this point, I really enjoyed his company because he was really funny. Not as dynamic as Gilbert, for my understanding. Well, who is? But you guys would have loved him when he was off camera. Now, remember in Son of Frankenstein, he had no lines. He got teased about that. Don't forget your lines, Boris, everybody would say.

I'm sitting next to him, and we're bored. I'm bored. I get bored easy, then and now, I suppose. Anyway, Mr. Karloff had borrowed a little checkerboard from somebody. I'd never seen one. It folded in half, very clever, and all the little pieces for it. And on a little bit of a table there with a script girl giving us, I think, he taught me how to play checkers.

And I'm about four and a half, and you learn fast then. That's great. Very easy game. And we had played, I guess, on Jeepers for a couple of weeks, once, twice a week, easy, for a couple of weeks. And I had heard, I never have any money. I know I'm making some money. Everybody's got money now. And ice cream costs a couple pennies. I never had any money. So I heard, I heard the grippers, these big fullback guys, moving all this stuff around, bet two bits, half a bet, two bits, and I figured out that was coins.

So one day, I'm going to play with Mr. Koroff at his invitation. We have at least a 20, 25-minute wait between takes. And I remember saying to him, verbatim almost, I'll bet you two bets. He was very surprised at that. And he says, you're something like, okay, you're wrong or something. And so we're playing checkers. But he was very popular. This is my introduction to real good leadership, okay?

He was very popular. He earned it. Very popular with the hard-working crew guys moving things around with the mic guys. And they're always teasing him, walking by. So he was distracted several times. And I'm playing this game serious, okay? I've got a bet going on. And I won it legitimately.

I won it. You beat him. Yeah. So I've got your corner. I've. Yeah. So I've got your corner. I've got your corner. I've got your corner. People started gathering around. Boris, he beat you.

He beat you. I won my money. I got my hand out in front of everybody. I won this two-bit deal. I won this two-bit deal. Then he went into his costume deal. He's a very clever guy. I'm in costume.

I have no money. It doesn't very clever guy. I'm in costume. I have no money. Doesn't matter to me. I want my money. The crew and Mr. Lear's there teasing him about not paying the kid. Wow. He took me by the hand, and he had a bit of a grin on him. I'm okay. Everybody's following.

We went off to inside this huge hangar-like place, a studio place, soundstage, as they call it. And into his dressing room was inside the big building there. Stepped up into it, came out a couple seconds later with what proved later to be a very shiny half-dollar. Gentlemen, I had never seen a half-dollar. It looked like a gold piece. I mean, it's shiny. And he's trying to give it to me. I think it's funny money.

I won't take it. The crew is loving this thing. To see, I got paid my mortgage off if I had a clip of this thing. To see Boris Koloff in full costume get down on one knee in front of this little jerk kid and me and hold up his half dollar like,

Donnie, this is real money. Take it, take it, take it. That's great. You know what's so funny? We had on Janet Ann Gallo from Ghost of Frankenstein. She used to play hide-and-go-seek with Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr., and you played checkers with Boris Karloff.

That, to me, the two of you seemed, that's the childhood I wish I had. You know, we're having so much fun here with Donnie Donegan, we're going to make this a two-parter. So let's hear the rest of Donnie's fun stories about his Hollywood career on our next Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Col colossal obsessions.